Sekai no Owarigakure
by korel.c
Summary: Fate never leaves a traveller untested. For those who are strong, stronger challenges await still. But even experienced travellers need rest, sometimes. For these people, Uzumaki Naruto builds a Village. (AU, Time-travel)
1. Prologue

Does the sea, lapping at the shore, make a sound? If there are no human ears to hear it, nor even the calls of the birds. Only the few dead fish that linger too close to a whirlpool float in the five broken islands of once-great Uzushiogakure. If they do so they do so silently.

Uzushiogakure is dead. Long lost, buried by the combined efforts of several shinobi villages. One of the last concerted efforts, before the coalition fell apart. Before Konohagakure, soon to be one of the greatest Hidden Villages, imprinted its guilt into its symbol. Before the Yondaime Hokage.

Still, the whirlpools swirl. Great maelstroms are birthed from the thick mist and cold waters, throwing washes of water and floods on the limited flora of the islands. Once-great trees, gifts from the Shodaime and Nidaime Hokages, are cracked open, their hearts long eroded by the elements. Water, wind, lightning, earth. Fire, too, rages. But the Will of Fire does not exist here, where guilt hangs heavy.

(Under the whirlpools are thousands of Uzu villagers, civilians and ninja both.)

It is a myth, this land of fog and death. Spies that pass by on their routine way for infiltration and training avoid it. Rumors abound that seals, grand seals, lie unawakened, only waiting for the unwary to trigger. A messy death, a lingering, painful one. This is the least of worries.

Perhaps, too it is mere fairy-tales and nonsense - but so is Kakuzu, the Heart-Thief, and in the bounty trade he is still a very concrete presence.) And - some brave, foolish, insane souls, have gone into the mists and silent whirlpools.

None have left.

Gulls circle the once-proud village, calling their cries. In the mists the cries are distorted. Harsh caws, screams, shrieks, perhaps echoing with the unavenged dead, the uncleansed dead.

They dare not land. Gulls are hardy, yet do not exit the fog. Even in their animal minds, they know this is a place to stay away from. So they circle, and ride the currents, and are gone.

In the middle of the fog, there are five islands that remain standing.

The last Uzukage triggered all of her seals when the last of her shinobi fell. With her dying breath. Once, among the whirlpools, rooms danced. Houses floated in the ocean, held by seal and jutsu, by technique and finesse. To move from house to house, to visit friends, one rode the whirlpool. Inwards is forwards, and outwards upwards. Houses were mounted on pieces of ocean rock, that bobbed upward ever so often to form a dance of islands, before being whisked away. It was an espionage trick; the layout of Uzushiogakure changed week-by-week, never the same twice. The whirlpools ever spin, but what seems like one direction is in truth many.

The whirlpools hid Uzushiogakure, defended it, and destroyed it.

With her dying breath the last Uzukage shattered the long-labored seals, spent her blood for the Grand Cancel. Blood that quickly drained from her, after the last invader was finished.

By then the refugees were long gone to the welcoming arms of the Sandaime Hokage. And so the grudges of Uzushiogakure are gone to the grave, too. The deep, watery grave.

And so did the smaller islands sink to the bottom, taking with them the memories of happy families.

Now Uzushiogakure is ruins, rock formations overgrown with moss and algae. It is sticks and long splinters of deadwood, treated with varnish and seals untouched by the Grand Cancel. They lie in furrows along the sand, or float as driftwood into the ocean. Ever-buoyant, sealed as they are, they ride the crest of the whirlpool, and float back out as the currents fade.

On the central island, a large shape rises against the perpetually overcast sky. Three walls stand, the fourth in rubble and ruins. The floor is still lacquered and varnished, protected from weather by carvings in the floor. As water fills it, it glows still with the chakra of ancient sealers.

Summer passes as winter does, year after year. The children of the other Hidden Villages play, grow, kill.

Uzushiogakure is silent. It makes no sound.

There is no one to hear it.


	2. Fuuinjutsu-Naruto

The gulls have gone silent.

The sea, lapping at the ever-present shore, stills.

There is a rumble in the sand. Long-enduring nails bend, then break. Great piles of rotting debris, formed by some past wind jutsu or explosive tag, collapse. (- they are wood-grains and steel shards warped and drowned and tossed and felled - misshapen debris of shattered walls, houses, homes, hearts.)

The whirlpools absorb tsunami. Not once has Uzushiogakure feared tsunami; great movements of energy are taken up by the currents and swept around, dissipated into storage seals for the defense of the Village.

But the seals no longer function. A tsunami sweeps up the south-east island, the one with its peninsula riding low into the water. What little grass (hardy, bush-scrub) is quickly drowned and salted under the great excess.

There were four great whirlpools in Uzushiogakure. One for each of the compass directions. Using them as locations and summons, the seal masters of Uzushiogakure worked feats of fuuinjutsu unknown to masters of all the known times before their intricate thoughts-become-seals; ...or even after. They mastered the arts of sealing with ink, with blood, with brush and finger, applications on paper, tags, skin and soul.

But for all their power and creativity, they were still only mortal, and a seal master's life work is never truly continued. In dribs, and drabs, certainly: and they had but limited time before the seal masters of Uzushiogakure triggered all of their seals to take away the flood of invaders to their home.

And as it was their home - not one of them would have considered, for even a moment, to stop the whirlpools.

But stopped...they were.

The four great whirlpools began to counter-rotate, appearing to spin in a controlled multiple spiral. The currents that formed the whirlpools rotated until they ran as four separate tubes, lines that interwove in and out of itself, raising troughs and crests to form lines and valleys. They formed an intricate, utterly complicated seal.

(Deep below, the dead whimpered, recognized a chakra, and whimpered no more.)

(The dead began to hope.)

Immense waves climbed up the shore, mounted the trees and flooded the islands. Whatever traps were left over from the long-ago invasion were flushed out of the ground, out of the range of the seal, and into the open sea. Perhaps they would wash up at Kiri, or at Wave.

The seal, three-island-lengths wide and long, began to glow a cerulean blue that was undercut by brief, forgotten, flashes of red chakra, as though they were threads in a tapestry of azure ropes, as blue as Uzushiogakure's forgotten sky.

A shimmer ran through the seal, and pulsed.

Gulls shrieked, and scattered from their rides above the currents.

The clouds, for one stunning moment, parted.

As sunshine washed the seal in its rays, the world throbbed, as though Shinigami's bell was struck.

A body bobbed to the surface, blond hair lank and limbs limp. It floated on its back. The six-whiskered face was warmed by the sun.

The gentle ocean deposited him unto the central island's shore.

Eyes opened.

Blue. Blue as the sky.

The figure on the beach opened his mouth. Whatever words he spoke, if air passed through his mouth, was lost by the sounds of the waves smashing against and over the other islands.

Yet their effects could be clearly seen. Writing, kanji so small they almost interlocked, ran around his body and settled him deep into a cocoon of that island's sand.

The eyes, open though they were, saw nothing. They seemed to track instead a movement inside him, pulsing through his body.

The ocean - Uzushiogakure - the dead - they now had someone to hear their sounds.

He was simply unwilling.

How long had he stayed there?

How long had he been under?

Flashes - bright red - the ink of sealing. Bloody-hands. Masses of Zetsu clones, too many Edo Tensei; too many Rasenshuriken, too many Bunshin of every shape and type and form. What had taken lifetimes of knowledge and preparation, gone, wiped away by Madara. Obito in the end had turned on his manipulator. An Uchiha Madara from beyond his time-loop; a Madara who had adopted that name and that body to confuse all others still further. Time is a loop. Dimensions are a path. Madara had but taken a single step. For his mastery of time-space ninjutsu - perhaps he had been a Shisui once, perhaps he had been another world's Obito - all steps were one to him. He walked paths easily, and lived loops without difficulty.

Bright white, the scald of skin against fire, demon against ultimately-human; coil against coil, unfamiliar jutsu against familiar. Senjutsu against Kinjutsu, kenjutsu against i-jutsu; technique against brute force, wielded equally.

All had fallen before him until he faced Madara on even ground, backed by his ever-looping arsenal of seals, weapons, and knowledge of how to break the world's - and the loop's - rules.

Even then, Madara, being not of his world nor loop, simply broke all the rules with a gesture of his hand.

Lifetimes of work - gone - into the void.

When at last Madara - demon beyond bijuu, almost an ancient monstrosity lurking behind a spiral-rimmed face-mask - laid his hands on the throat of the last hope of the dimension, he had bitten down on the grip that strangled him. His fangs, elongated canines, pierced his lip on the way down, mingling blood with blood.

The six-whiskered man paid not the price for taking another step on the path. Blood with blood knows much, and the demon who called himself Madara walked the paths as easily as one breathes.

Price is paid. The six-whiskered man hopes that he will have lifetimes still to study the art of walking the paths, that one day he might reach the house at the end, and have his final peace.

Until then, until then, ne, ne, ja ne, he might as well build a rest-point.

In his long loops, he has met other travellers on their own loops, that intersect with his at some point, at some space.

He knows, too, that one rule of the multiverse. He has lived for so long, has studied so much, has talked to so many people, that it is inescapable. There are certain things which are possible. There are certain things which are likely. That they are likely draws other likely things together.

He remembers his own world, where a girl with white eyes declared her love for him, jumping in the way of a blow meant for him. He remembers talking to another, older than himself, where the girl's older sister did much the same thing. Another, who told him that he had jumped in the way of the blow for her.

Another, who told him that he had died for her. And came back to life, still haunting, still breathing.

Dattebayo.

What does it matter?

He is staring up at the cloud-gathering sky.

He closes his eyes.

Curve by curve, his twitching fingers carve out a destination seal on both sides of his body.

He closes his eyes for a moment-

It is summer.

The seals have been wiped off by the repeated high tides.

Trying to stay awake, he carves the seals again. The world blurs -

It is winter.

It is cold. His feet are sunk deep into the insulating sand and still the frost chills them.

He carves the seals again. Focuses. Tries to stay awake.

He pushes chakra out through his fingers.

Feels nothing.

Exhaustion rushes through him.

His fingers spark once, then nothing.

It is summer.

Summer, like bright blond sunlight hair, and bright blue clear eyes. A smile, like the wisps of clouds.

The waves have subsided. That is good. The clouds above part briefly, and patches of sunlight show through. They are patches like those...under a tree, a healthy tree holding a swing.

It is summer.

Summer, and the flash of a happy smile, pink hair, green eyes. No - they are not related - pink hair-green eyes is caring and professional but not happy. Strained. Painful. Or are those the memories of himself? They are strained and painful and difficult. Cheese through a net of wire.

There was...a traitor. There was...a bright smile and a mother's love. But he is an orphan and he knows that down to his bones.

Something is welling in him. He glows to the eye. The seals, finally finished, memorized and imprinted, glow with a chakral light.

The seals on his body unlock from each other. They float apart, and spring him outward within it.

They fall apart, and he is lying on a bed of hard-packed sand.

He tries to stand, and cannot.

The seals under his hands glow, and glow, and another figure steps out of the ocean.

Another person.

Caring and professional.

"Naruto," she says. Her hands light green with healing chakra. "Stay still."

He tries to manage a smile, for her.

His hands are already building new seals. His mind is awhirl with ideas.

Behind her, the whirlpools are reborn. They are pleased - the dead are pleased. There are two ears to hear their sound.


	3. Iryonin-Sakura

"You can't even stand?" she asks, running a diagnostic palm down his body. He flinches at the feel of the jutsu, sliding through his own field. His chakra covers him, flowing through the seals tattooed into every inch of his skin, layered by seals over seals, keeping them invisible. It is mildly cold, and professionally distant, and yet he still shudders at the otherness of it.

His lips refuse to move. He remains staring up at the sky.

She slings an arm under his, drags him up with chakra running just under her skin, through her muscles. It hums against him, and he forces his internal chakra to accept her, let her through.

Her presence seems small against his, like the smallest slug holding up Gamabunta. The fine control she has over her muscles drags his dead weight, his sandals digging a new furrow into the ground.

She ducks her head down slightly, so that the detritus in the air will fly into her headband, rather than her eyes. She scans the ground, looking for a sign. The grass and ground here is wet throughout, soaked with a buoyancy and the algae-rich color of the seawater.

Some twenty to forty steps away, Haruno Sakura finds what she is looking for. The grass around this area is thickly grown with grass, but as she steps onto it, her feet sink down almost to the knee. The mud she is in feels cold but with no trace of the slightly coarse texture of salt. And ahead is a puddle of water, spilling out of a small hole in a gently rolling bank. The color of the water is but faintly blue-green, rather than the turquoise of the rest of the island.

"Here, Naruto," she says, and lays him to rest against the slope. "Give me earth chakra."

His eyelids barely flutter open, but he understands.

Naruto has no longer had a problem reaching inside himself. The cage which once held a demon fox is empty now of its inhabitant, but by no means useless. Instead, the bars themselves are inscribed with script, and the walls, the ceiling, and the substanceless floor are all the triggers to the seals tattooed onto his body.

Sakura places a hand on his right shoulder. Under her hand, the muscle bulges and flattens, and chakra surges up between her arms as a waterfall does. She holds the other hand out, and pictures in her mind what it will look like, this shelter from the elements.

She barely whispers the release phrase under her breath, not needing to speak to maintain her concentration.

Earth chakra surges out, with it the stability of the ancient rock and the potential for change, and rock walls rise out of the ground. The three rock walls merge with a slanted roof, just taller than Naruto stands at its highest point. The fourth wall rises, leaving only a boulder in front for the 'door', and closes off all else.

Inside the shelter, a stone bed has formed. Sakura wastes no time in manhandling a fellow member of the Konoha Nine onto the bed, and begins healing her friend, in order of triage.

Brain damage, internal organs, severe bleeding - cuts in several arteries, and major veins. Broken bones (ribs, pelvis, elbows, knees), The nerve damage she isolates but treats last because she does not want to cause Naruto pain, and the energy cost of giving him his nerves back and then sedating him again is too much for a whole-body healing such as this one. His chakra coils are irretrievably twisted up with his body seals, and so she can do little for his chakra flow. Knowing him, however, Naruto is probably already finding his way out of the mess. The best she can do is make him fit to walk, to eat, to fight.

With a burst of her chakra and concentration, Sakura soothes Naruto's torn muscles and reconnects the burst blood vessels with the heart. Face pale and breathing hard, Sakura slides to the grass beside the bed, leaning her head against Naruto.

"Naruto?"

Naruto swings his legs around the side of the bed. Opens his eyes once more, this time truly seeing.

Outside the light has faded; it is no longer day-summer, but a mid-summer night. The gentle patter of raindrops fall on the stone roof. Quickly that becomes a drizzle, a rainfall, a downpour.

It is sheeting outside, and the winds begin to howl around the shelter. Sakura stands, totters over to the boulder, and uses the last of her strength to seal them in.

Just in time, as the howling of the winds double, then triple, in volume. One of Uzu's winter maelstroms, ironically Naruto's namesake, has been born from the unnatural ripples in the water.

Sakura sits in the dark and waits for Naruto to speak.

Naruto stares at the boulder. He carves out the simplest seal, the kanji for fire, and breathes life into it.

A cheerful orange flame sits in the corner of the stone bed. It reveals Sakura's expression, pallid and worrying.

"Naruto?"

"...I'm fine."

His throat works as he stares off at the distance.

His last loop, he revealed his travelling to the Konoha Twelve. They ... took it in a multitude of differing reactions.

Sakura's reaction, un-surprisingly, hurt the most. He had arranged for it that Team 7 not reform, for a change of pace; he had not expected that that loop was to be the final one. So, Sakura's expression, on seeing him hurt, had been - distant, professional - and that hurt more than her Tsunade-controlled punches to the head.

"If you're sure," Sakura says. "Still, get some rest. The weather won't stop for a while yet."

"Yeah," Naruto says.

The transport seals outside are in no condition to be transported into.

On the path of a traveller, safe places are ports in a storm. And what better place to begin than here, amid the natural maelstrom? A port is a dock with facilities.

Looking at Sakura, and checking over himself, he remembers that he has a dock, and he has a medic.

That is more than enough to spite the gods of the multiverse, because he is Uzumaki Naruto...believe it.

He clenches his fists. Stands.

"-Naruto?"

Wavers a little. Is resolute.

His arms feel like lead. Still, they raise until he braces himself against the wall.

"Naruto?" Sakura tries to stand up, but shakily lowers herself back to her seat. "What are you doing?"

Naruto makes his fingers move, uses the chakra seal that ignites on his fingertips to carve line and curve and deed into the wall.

He taps it with his other hand and stands back.

The transport seal is made into large-print. It glows faintly on the wall, chakra blue.

Uzumaki Naruto, Fuuinjutsu Level III master, throbs as his seal activates unexpectedly. It makes him take a step back.

The air in front of his seal shimmers, begins to wave as though it were liquid glass.

Abruptly the air resolves into two bodies, clung together so tightly it looks as though they are one bloodied mess.

It makes the small shelter quite a lot smaller, and also much smellier.

Sakura gasps. She recognizes the hair, even by the dull orange light.

Naruto takes in a long, slow breath. He recognizes the presence, even in his weakened state.

"Forehead," one of the figures sways to her feet, bearing her weight and her partner's by clawing her hands up the wall. "Figures you would get here first."

"Ino," Sakura says, too worried to counter-insult. "What happened to the two of you?"

The other - a boy - looks upwards and meets Naruto's eyes. Naruto slings an arm under his shoulder, bears his weight so that Ino can concentrate more on standing. Sakura struggles to her feet to support Ino.

A fine foursome they look, blood spattered everywhere.

"Don't worry, Sakura," Ino says, trying to wipe her bloodstained hands on the remains of her clothing. "It's not all ours."

"You're hurt?" Sakura gasps, and starts a diagnostic. The green glow sputters and flickers out.

"-We'll survive," Ino says.

A loud crash sounds from outside, and both Ino and the too-thin boy flinch. Their hands grasp for weapons that lie on some other battlefield.

"Stay," Naruto says. He looks them each in the eye, lowers them to the bed. "Stay."

"We - can't -" Ino says. "It was a desperate measure, the scroll you gave us to activate. But we have to go back - otherwise...Shikamaru dies...Asuma-sensei dies..."

"What scroll?" Sakura asks. "I thought the transport seal could only be written in earth or water...?"

Ino looks at her, truly looks at her. Her gaze flickers to Naruto, whose eyes have become shrouded, unclear. "Sakura...when did I lend you my purple pumps? The ones with the senbon in its seams?"

Sakura looks confused. "February twenty-third, four years ago by my personal time."

Ino's eyes widen. She shrinks back against the wall. The boy sits up, and his face comes for the first time into the firelight.

"Chouji..." Sakura says, aghast. He is stick thin, his hair hacked off wildly, burned in patches, and twisted in others.

She screws her face up and the diagnostic flickers back to life for a moment, before dying.

She fixes Naruto with a pleading look.

"Look...Naruto...Uzumaki-san...whoever you are," Ino says, "Please just send us back the way we came. We'll come out from behind, surprise them, and get us out of your hair. Can we...can we make that deal?"

Naruto's arms unfold from where they have been through Ino's password, and he starts forward.

Ino shrinks back and begins to make handseals.

"Time moves slower here," Naruto begins. He takes a step toward Sakura. Ino shrinks back from him, closer to Chouji. She lets the handseals go. She has nothing left. There is a presence in this room which is stronger than anything she has ever felt from him before.

He places a hand on Sakura's stomach, and pours his chakra into her paths, the gentle sharing that Tsunade and Sakura had taught him, once upon a lifetime.

"Sakura."

"...Yes, Naruto?"

"Use my chakra. Heal them."

He made his decision, a long time ago. When he discovered there were first gods in the multiverse. When he discovered there were an infinite number of Madaras and Obitos, good and bad and every shade in between.

It is a long and lonely path to be a traveller. At some point, one needs to take a rest and enjoy the journey.

"Ino. Chouji."

Ino and Chouji look up at a man who looks like their Naruto, but without the air of desperation that all of Konoha's shinobi carry nowadays. Instead he looks like he has lost everything - like desperation, charisma, luck, was not enough.

"Yes, Uzumaki-san?"

"Welcome to Sekai no Owarigakure. The Village Hidden at the End of the World. We exist half-in and half-out of this world. Time does not flow at the same rate as your world. Stay. Heal. Become stronger. Then go and rescue your Shikamaru, your Asuma-sensei."

Ino looks at him. Sighs.

"Do we have a choice?"

It is a man's voice, with no hint of desperation.

"No."

Sakura approaches them, color on her cheeks and green in her hands. Another stone bed rises out of the ground at Naruto's gesture, and together Naruto and Sakura lay them on the beds, side by side.

As Sakura diagnoses and treats their wounds, Naruto places his palm on the ground and hums. The walls of the shelter shift apart, the roof spreading with them as they go, encompassing even the little water spring.

This Village is as yet, nothing more than a dock and a field medic, but it is a good place to start.


	4. Infiltration-Ino

As Sakura's hands rove about her body, resting just above her skin, Ino remembers how they got here.

It has been but five days since she and Chouji left their home in Iwa, their infiltration mission successful. Mostly; the information that she went there to gain has been gotten and reported back without capture. Chouji, ever happy but with that hint of war-readiness and equal wariness, is walking ahead of her, his eyes watching the route ahead and the far-off forests. The mountains are behind her, the thick veins of gems and gold worth nothing but baubles. She longs for the thick canopy of her homeland.

It has been but five days since her papers were stamped and her farewells made. The people who welcomed the two of them have little idea that they were foreign shinobi, from their land's most hated enemy. Instead they remember rotund Mako and his wife-who-loved-pretty-things, who made the most delicious udon and beef barbecue.

A messenger hawk circles over the two of them, and Ino, smiling, reaches up to accept it.

As she unfurls the scroll, her smile drops. As she reads further, the presence she emits causes Chouji to stop in his tracks, allowing her to catch up to him.

"Ino?" he asks. "What's wrong?"

Ino swallows back a gasp and hands him the scroll.

His eyes flick through it fast, and he is Chouji now, the teammate and friend and possibly-lover, less Mako.

They are half a day from Konoha. Half a day from where Kirigakure shinobi are now assaulting their loved ones.

With a glance at Chouji, her face set grimly, they run toward the distant forests.

* * *

This is the last happy memory that Ino has.

What follows is weeks and weeks of fighting. One by one the Konoha Twelve fall around them.

Naruto was off on a training trip with Jiraiya, and although he tries to make it back as fast as he can, he is too late for Team Eight. Kurenai falls when one of her genjutsu fails to one of the Seven Swordsmen, the one who wields Hiramekarei. Kiba dies when one of his Gatsuugas carries him past the support of his teammates, while taking out a cluster of enemies harassing his genin. Hinata heals and wields the Gentle Fist with equal skill, but runs out of chakra, and is shortly killed by a Mist jounin. Shino, the last of his team, becomes a waking nightmare for the Mist. They send teams of their elite ninja, and fighting to the last, Shino eliminates Zabuza and Kisame in a grand showdown.

Ino crouches on top of the Hokage Tower, surveying her surroundings. Beside her, Naruto bends over the scroll he has brought up here. He is hastily drawing an intricate seal, muttering under his breath all the while. Underneath them, the streets are flooded with Kage Bunshin and Mist shinobi, fighting. Explosions and jutsu scream through the air, while what remains of the civilians and rookie genin are herded out the nearest exits.

Even as Ino eyes her next target, Chouji tenses, growing one of his arms to giant size and hardening his skin, so that a Karyuu Endan breaks against it.

"We can't stay here for too long," Shikamaru says. "Soon, they will bring more forces to bear against us. You're too high priority a target for them, Naruto."

"I know," Naruto says, concentrating on the fine lines of his kanji. "When I'm done with this seal, use it to escape. Regroup, reform what remains of Konoha at Uzu, and hope and pray that they don't have reinforcements."

He pauses, drawing a straight line through the center of his circle. "Several genin - yours, actually, Shikamaru - have my blood in vials, so that should get you through the seals my ancestors set up."

"Hokage-sama," Shikamaru acknowledges, quietly.

"I'm not," Naruto says.

"In all but name, you are my Hokage."

By the railing, Chouji hugs Ino tightly to him. "Do you see the mist unfolding from the market?"

"Yes?" Ino asks.

"Between the fruit stand and where the tea shop was, there was a flicker of movement. They have a barricade there -"

Ino goes limp in his arms.

Ino takes control of the mist-producer, a jounin by the look of the uniform. Behind her, a cluster of Mist shinobi are taking shelter in the ruined wood of the fruit market. She cancels the mist jutsu, and draws a kunai.

It takes less than three seconds to murder the unsuspecting shinobi, before Ino calmly places an explosive tag on her vessel's body and withdraws from his mind.

She returns to her body, which is now lying on the ground. Blinking herself awake, she sees Chouji across the far side of the roof.

"-ake it and go!" Naruto is saying.

Shikamaru is sweating heavily beside him, his fingers locked in the Kage Mane handseal. Chouji is bowling through a group of shinobi, and Ino picks herself off the ground, ready to help.

A shadow falls across her.

"Almost there-"

Ino flips backward as a giant talon slams into the ground underneath her, splintering the wood and shattering the stones.

She looks up and up, where a giant hawk sits, Suigetsu of the Choking Water oozing off its back.

"Your opponent is me, Yamanaka!"

As he reforms, Nuibari sliding out of a seal on his uniform, Ino grits her teeth. Suigetsu is beyond her capabilities - she can't hold out on his stamina. But - she flicks a glance out of the side of her eye - Naruto only needs a few minutes.

Minutes she can buy. What remains of Konoha needs Naruto more than it needs her.

Suigetsu lunges.

* * *

Below her, Chouji slams a fist into a Mist shinobi. The shinobi's ribs cave in, and his mouth opens in an airless gasp.

Another shinobi next to him hisses as a wind-natured chakra blade slides into his heart from behind, and falls.

"Chouji," Asuma-sensei says, and delivers a back-kick to another sneaking up on him. "Suigetsu is on top. I'll take care of the ones remaining here. Go help Ino."

"Hai!"

Chouji turns and runs, leaping between piles of rubble to emerge back on the rooftop. The sight he sees there alarms him.

Shikamaru is sweating, clenching a kunai buried in his side. His face is pale, and the wound is turning a sickly purple-green.

"Kusa poison," Shikamaru gasps. "They...had help..."

"Shika - "

"Pull it out -"

Chouji yanks it out and a spray of blood coats his hands. Shikamaru gasps, and applies fire chakra to his wound, closing his eyes to the pain. When he opens them again, there is desperation in them, the familiar desperation that all remaining Konoha shinobi share. Shikamaru never had that before, his mind endlessly calculating.

"Ino...needs your help...go..."

"Asuma-sensei is downstairs," Chouji says. "I-"

Shikamaru nods. "I will support him. Go - go now!" He staggers toward the stairs, his hands leaving his side. His fingers form the Kage Mane seal, and he disappears into the darkness of the rubble down.

Chouji looks at where he was for one long moment, hoping - wishing - praying - that he will see Shikamaru again.

Then he sees Ino, facing Nuibari and Suigetsu with a kunai, and sprints.

* * *

"Oh, Yamanaka, how useless you are without someone to possess. I'm going to cut you into two - no, three, no, a multiple of slices - I'm going to drown you!"

Ino pants, her last kunai all but hopeless against his onslaught. She is bleeding sluggishly from her torso, from her side. The needle of Nuibari has struck her, time and time again, but it is clear that Suigetsu is playing with her. He looks at her with mocking eyes, before they widen.

"Ah, an Akimichi! Perhaps I should cut off his arms first! No, his legs! Ah-ha - I am a genius of murder!"

"Chouji!" Ino says, a part of her in relief, a part of her in dread. "Be careful!"

Chouji pounces on her instead, and pulls her away.

"What-"

"Fleeing prey! So irresistible!" Suigetsu launches himself after them.

His face curves inward as his nose and fang meet Naruto's fist first.

"Suigetsu."

"Uzumaki Naruto," Suigetsu says, his face lit with something very different from mockery. "The one who took down my brother."

"Yes," Naruto bares his fangs at Suigetsu, who returns the gesture. "That would be me. Your opponent."

"Not right now -" Suigetsu says, and Nuibari flings itself out of his hand, heading straight for Ino and Chouji.

Naruto makes an attempt to catch it, and fails. "Chouji!"

There is a burst of chakra so bright that it blinds Suigetsu and Naruto equally.

When the light clears, it reveals silence and harsh breathing.

Nuibari has pierced clean through Chouji, and into Ino.

"No -" Naruto says. His blue eyes have turned red.

Nuibari slides out of the two of them, its string coiled around Suigetsu's hand. Without Nuibari's support, Ino and Chouji collapse to the ground.

"No!"

"Oh - shit -" Suigetsu manages to get out, before Kyuubi's chakra grabs hold of him, blistering his skin at the contact.

Naruto snarls and tackles him, and the two of them fall off the roof. Suigetsu's hawk follows, spiralling downward.

Ino releases the genjutsu. Chouji is much thinner, and his eyes are closed. Nuibari but grazed his side, redirected by his chakra shroud, and he is bleeding sluggishly. She passes her hands over his wound, sealing the wound with healing chakra.

There is blood all over their bodies, but they are alive.

Asuma-sensei comes from the wreckage below them, supporting Shikamaru.

He does not ask about Naruto. Kyuubi's presence is suffocating. Only Team Ten, who has loved Naruto like a brother, has been exposed so much to Kyuubi that they can move.

"Should we wait for Naruto?" Ino asks. It is a trick, it is a ninja trick, but Team Ten who has loved Naruto loves each other the more. It is a betrayal that Ino can't stand for herself. But for Chouji and Shikamaru, she would betray her own father.

"No," Shikamaru says. "He said to take it and go, if he was unable to make it for himself."

"But-"

Shikamaru looks at her with haunted eyes. Betrayed eyes. He looks away. "I can't look at you right now, Ino."

He places a hand on the seal as Ino gasps. The seal lights. "Go. Go now."

A shuriken buries itself into his shoulder. As one, Asuma-sensei and Shikamaru turn to look at the attacker. A Mist team are on the roof.

"Now!" Shikamaru snarls, and Ino flinches. He turns and sends three shuriken flying from his fingers, running toward the Mist team. Asuma follows. Ino starts to struggle to her feet.

"No," Chouji says, and his grip on her tightens. His hand meets the ink of the seal.

There is a bright light, and they are in a rock shelter, somewhere else.

* * *

"I will work on this seal, and get you home," the other Naruto says. His presence still swirls through the room, and Ino flinches once more. "In the meantime...you are free to stay as long here as you like."

Ino narrows her eyes. Her most recent memories are war. War leaves none trusting. "What conditions do you have?"

"Just one," Naruto says.

Sakura pauses in her healing of Chouji's side wound. "Naruto-"

"Leave this place better than when you found it."

"I didn't ask to be here!" Ino says.

"Nonetheless. You are here."

He is merciless, dangerous, Ino realizes. There is something hard about him. Naruto - her Naruto - hadn't had that. Her Naruto still had innocence inside of him. Something pure about his spirit.

"Fine!" she says. "Fine. Just...get us back - as soon as you can!"

He nods. He goes back to studying the seal on the wall.

"What-what can you offer...us?" Sakura says. She is done with Chouji. What remains can only be fixed by rest.

"Food," Ino says, bitterly. "Chouji will cook for you. I'll find the ingredients."

The storm outside is subsiding.

"Leave Chouji here," Sakura says.

"Of course." Ino's face twists. They need a hostage. "I'll go find something to eat, then."

"Go," Naruto says. He puts a finger up, smoothes a kanji out on the wall, and writes another in its place.

Ino goes.


	5. Cook-Chouji

"Chouji?" Sakura asks. Her hands are resting by her sides. She sits on the stone bed left empty by Ino's departure, and looks lost.

Chouji remains staring up at the rock ceiling. Outside the storm has all but faded, and he still carries the guilt of betraying his world's? time's? Naruto, of helping someone who betrayed the counterpart of the man standing and staring at a seal on the wall.

"Chouji," Sakura says. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see her wringing her hands. "What...happened to you? What happened to all of you?"

In his world, Chouji had never really been close to Sakura. Sakura chased after Sasuke when he left for Sound. She never left for quite long enough to become missing-nin, but there were times, when she was chuunin, that she took...extra long breaks. And vanished. Frequently there were surveillance missions...but a few times, retrieval ones.

He doesn't know if he can trust this world's Sakura, either.

"Pain and war and death," Naruto's voice comes, low and hollow. Chouji flinches. "Leave it alone, Sakura. If they wanted to say something, they would have."

"O-oh. Okay."

Chouji pushes himself off the stone bed, taking his first few shaky steps. Sakura rushes forward to support him.

With her help, he makes his way to the entranceway, and takes his first look out at the Uzu landscape.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Sakura says.

The storm, fading, had left the sky with a purple tint, though clouds still brewed on the horizon. The sea, still visible beyond the edge of the island - as there was no canopy in the way - tossed and turned, throwing spray up onto the distant shore.

Silhouetted against the fading light, the dim slant of the sunrays, Chouji can make out his teammate, a small figure on her hands and knees, searching for food.

He is aware of his stomach's hunger. How could an Akimichi not be? But he is not sure he should eat around these two...

A stomach growls.

Chouji, despite his forced apathy, turns to look.

Sakura flushes red.

"O-oh," she says. "Sorry." She doesn't seem to know how to act around him, beyond a medic-patient relationship. It's fair - he doesn't know either.

Leave this place better than when you found it.

The condition that Naruto - that Uzumaki-san - had set for them, in order to live here. To be stuck here, yes. But Chouji knows he has to rest, regain his calories, if he wants to be good for Shikamaru and Asuma. That will take...at least a day, if not more. They can take care of themselves. He has faith.

He remembers the kunai wound - the poisoned kunai wound - in Shika's side, and winces. He has faith because he has nothing else.

The small figure - Ino's - hair glints in the setting sun's rays.

"I..." his voice is rusty, and raw, from disuse and from keeping pain in.

"Yes?" Sakura says.

"I will cook for you." He doesn't direct the statement particularly inward, but he knows Naru- Uzumaki-san will hear it anyway.

"That is my and Ino's payment."

* * *

Water is not a problem.

There is a spring in the corner of the rock shelter, and a fire jutsu for heat boils it nicely enough.

Ino lays her foragings, and a brace of fish, down on one of the stone beds.

In their home, their war had gone down the drain. Every shinobi of above high-chuunin level in fighting ability had learned of Uzushiogakure, and the flora and fauna thereabouts. Ino, specializing in plants, was no exception.

Chouji is glad that this world seems to be mostly the same, because Ino has no qualms in showing the leaves where she had torn off a corner to check. Her poison knowledge is second to but one in Konoha.

Two dotons and a katon later, Chouji is serving fish soup.

"There isn't much left, Chouji," Ino says, her hand on his shoulder. A light, fleeting touch - Chouji craves it and rejects it, all at once. "I gathered the last of the mushrooms, and the cress had barely two leaves left, let alone another sprig."

Her other hand picks the chunks of fish out of the bowl.

Sakura drains the bowl, biting her lip.

"That was good, thank you."

"You're welcome."

Naruto places the bowl gently down onto the bed.

"Thank you for the meal," he says. He looks at them in turn. "I have figured out your seal. You may return home at any point from now on."

Ino stands up abruptly, pulling Chouji with her. "Let's go already!"

The cry rings out in the hollow room. All four of them expect a "Troublesome..." to follow, but none comes.

"Fine." Chouji finishes his meal, and stands. He bows to Naruto. "Thank you for having us."

"You are always welcome," the man that looks like Uzumaki Naruto says. "Before you go, however..."

"What?" Ino says.

Naruto walks over and shakes their hand, once each. He smiles, and for an instant both Chouji and Ino see their Naruto in his impish grin. "I wanted to wish you both good luck. Please touch the seal on the wall..."

Ino rushes to the seal, and presses her hand to it. It, and she, glows a white-blue, and she disappears.

"Chouji, wait." Naruto says. "At any time, if you need to return, make a Rat seal and say, 'The Village Hidden At World's End', and you - and whoever and whatever you are holding - will return here. Ino, too."

Chouji looks at him, and nods sharply.

"...Understood. Thank you, Uzumaki-san."

"...See you later, Chouji."

Chouji presses his hand to the wall, glows, and disappears as well.

"Naruto..." Sakura says. "That whole encounter was stra-"

The seal begins pulsing again. The kanji that were different from Naruto's original seal, the ones at the parameter definition, shatter, fade away like cheap ink on skin. New kanji reworks itself into the wall.

"Not another one-" Sakura says.

A young shinobi with a Konoha headband tumbles out of the wall. He collides with the stone bench, trips over it, and falls down.

Where his foot touches the ground, Naruto notices, the moss on the ground has begun to sprout.


	6. Demigod-Tenzo

There is a line of teaching that says that shinobi are gods. No doubt this came from the civilian population, who looked at the way that ninja could shift mountains, level forests, fill and empty lakes; firestorms, tornados, great bolts from the sky. That man himself could ascend to the heights. That to be shinobi is to have the potential to equal heaven itself.

And there were ninja, too, who descended from the heights to mingle among the people themselves. Monks...bodyguards...escorts. Iryonin, who the desperate civilians took their children to, who watched in awe as the illness no natural medicine could cure faded away in hours.

The Kages themselves...were beyond mortal imagination. The power contained in their bodies, aged over time like fine wine, grew larger and more intense.

The people of the villages believed...in the Shodaime, the Nidaime, the Sandaime, erected shrines to them, prayed to them for good fortune, for luck. And time after time their prayers were answered.

For in the dawn of the world after the Sage of the Six Paths lay down to rest and the Juubi, too, slumbered in nine fragments, a young clan named after the ever inward spiral set out to claim immortality and deity. And, with the triumph of an eternity of sealing, succeeded.

Genin became feared. Chunin were monsters. Jounin, death. Kages...came beyond that, were beyond that, were gods.

Konohagakure respected the gods of the other villages; Kirigakure, gods of the sea and the mists, Iwagakure - though hated - the gods of the Mountains and the mines.

But the ceremonies, bequeathed by that seeking clan, continued...

Every participant, Kage candidate, ascended the staircase winding around the top floor of the Kage's building. Ascended beyond the roof. What should have been possible for the roof.

Became gods. Or became nothing, their minds broken by the trials that they underwent.

Shodaime Hokage was revered as the Living God. Nidaime Hokage was the God of the Still Waters. Sandaime Hokage, the Professor of All Knowledge. Yondaime Hokage was the Joyful Lightning. Godaime Hokage, the Healing Goddess.

They could not die. But when it was time, they faded away from the realms that mortal eyes could perceive; even the strongest jounin. The Yondaime did not fade, but did not die - he, contending with the Shinigami, that long-ago ancestor who had once wrote the seals to ascend the mortals - exiled himself from the mortal realm, and sat to watch the show.

But even gods ... gods, a pretty maiden could catch their eye.

And so it was, when Yamato - Tenzo - was born. Under the eyes of the gods, his name was Tenzo. Under his mother, who ran her hand through the fuzz on the top of his head, he was Yamato and nothing else.

When Yamato was three, his wander through the Shodaime's garden coincided with the year that the greatest blooming the garden had had since the Shodaime Himself faded into the immortal realms. The cults surrounding the Hokages became alert to it fairly quickly.

At ten, when Yamato passed through the Academy and came face to face with the Sandaime for the first time, the Professor of All Knowledge peered into his eyes.

"Yamato," he rumbled, and spoke three words, unfathomable to mortal ears.

Yamato understood each word perfectly.

"Walk with me," the Professor offered, and little Yamato took the large, strong hand, roughened by calluses from weapons; hardened from war.

As they walked up the staircase from the Hokage's office, the stairs became smoother, evener, shinier. Up and up, winding around and around.

Finally the Hokage stopped at a doorway, leading into a long dark passage with a light at the end.

"Would you like to meet your father?" the Professor said.

Yamato, orphan boy, tensed, and rushed through the portal.

* * *

Yamato, seventeen. Yamato, in the middle of a war, a mask on his face. ANBU. 25 kills, 173 ANBU missions completed. In line - next - to become ANBU captain, then back out to become a trainer.

Yamato, seventeen. Tenzo, revered in the civilian cults as the Little God of Growth.

It is on one of the missions where Yamato realizes that somewhere along the way, he has become of divinity, of the divine. It is not when florists ask him to bless their flowers to blossom thick petals and strong scents, nor when herb-physicians ask him to pass his hands over their concoctions, and make them fresh, rich, intense, powerful.

It is when he stares at Kitsuchi, son of the Sandaime Tsuchikage, son of the Mountain.

Yamato stares at Kitsuchi from across the field. As chuunin and jounin both flicker in and out of sight and existence, the world narrows.

Pebbles choke weeds. Saplings bruise and shatter boulders. Their struggles emanate through both the physical and natural world, draw from natural and physical chakra. Time slows and stops and speeds up, all at once. Days pass. Weeks. Wounded are carried out, treated. The dying call for their parents, pray to the little and known gods. Gods of the ever-living things, Gods of the never-living things.

Yamato is facing Kitsuchi and the whole world is writ according to their will. Who is stronger, and who weaker, Yamato does not recall, remember, nor know.

Earth shakes as chuunin shift their positioning and terrain. Jounin blink in and out of existence and sight.

Where their kunai and shuriken clash, amber shards fall to the ground, littering it with detritus.

Reinforcements sweep in, a fresh wave of knights and soldiers and chariots (cannons and elephants and servants), and Yamato (white, pure, growth), is in a stalemate against Kitsuchi of the Rock.

Yamato can see it in Kitsuchi's eyes; he has accepted his divinity. He has grown up around it, it studs and lights his veins. His dark eyes gleam with the facets of precious metals, flecked with gold; Yamato's own, he knows, reflect nothing but the Senju green.

"You are good," Kitsuchi says in the language of the gods, the quiet words finding their way to Yamato's ears. "But you are not good enough to face me."

He lays a palm on the ground; all around the field, soil becomes barren, and his plants wither away, and die. Iwa chuunin and jounin spring on Konoha shinobi. Bereft of cover, they die valiantly but futilely, protecting each other to the last.

There is a roaring in Yamato's ears, and the world narrows down to the rock surging up from between his stances, between his legs. Chakra, heavy and dense like Kitsuchi's divinity, pushes in on him. Yamato cannot stand this. He is merely human.

Tenzo, however...

"They pray to me," Tenzo says, and the roaring is quieter. "Even in your far-off Iwa."

"...So?" Kitsuchi asks.

"So grow," Tenzo says, and vines burst from the barren ground, binding Iwagakure chuunin and jounin.

Konoha shinobi (what is left of them) waste no time, and throat-blood, heart-blood, leg-blood, waters the plants.

They stretch, hungry, seeking more.

The pressure around him dissolves, or is threaded through by Tenzo's will; his fingers are weaving into the focuses for his chakra. Rat, monkey, dog, bull - seal -

Trees, large leaved and branched and trunked, tower behind Tenzo, their canopies heavy with ripened fruit.

"Take," Tenzo says, and chuunin, compelled, race up the trees, their sandals sticking to the bark. Armfuls of fruit, borne by messengers and medics, are rushed to the groaning wounded. All at once, Kitsuchi is bound by creeping vines, poison ivy, fungi blooming from the ground.

Kitsuchi eyes him with wariness.

"Eat," Tenzo says, and the wounded bite down. For those saveable, wounds close, bones knit, color returns to shocked, blanched faces. For those not, pain fades as they pass on to be judged by the Shinigami.

The plants around Kitsuchi sink into his flesh, begin to take his divinity from him, feeding his chakra and his nature into Tenzo.

This is the war of gods and demigods, where one overpowers the other.

"Very good," Kitsuchi nods. "I underestimated you. Be patient, be strong. My father will avenge me."

"Let him try."

"No," Kitsuchi says. "Let him succeed. His avatar will come for you, the wrath of the Mountains."

Yamato lets him have his last words. Let him go to the heavens, outside of mortal purview.

A chuunin from Iwa, black-haired, female, lithe like a dancer, flits out of sight. Alive, rash, hatred in her eyes.

Iwa gains two demigods to light candles to, that night.

* * *

Word filters back to Konoha. Genin, chuunin, jounin all, pray to a new goddess of vengeance.

Righteous vengeance.

Yamato is...disturbed.

Tenzo waits. Growth is ever-constant, and prey and predator both choke each other, and mutually are lost, eventually and always. Death is a part of growth.

* * *

He faces her on another battlefield, choked with weeds and stones.

Amber has grown into the soil, embedded and spread, until it becomes yet another strategic location for both Konoha and Iwa.

The Joyful Lightning has already ended the war; this is a personal matter. A vengeance goddess against the end of her rampage.

Dig two graves and let the weeds choke the seeds of rebirth.

(At the end of the world, Uzumaki Naruto laughs bitterly, cynically, that his Sasuke would have prayed to her, and been found wanting for his vengeance was neither righteous nor just.)

Kurotsuchi, for all that she too has ascended the Steps Unto Heaven, never learned the words of the gods.

Tenzo teaches her even as he strives to suppress her.

They hold conversation even as she floats between his reaching stems and buds and death-flowers, even as she breaks down oak wall after rowan barricade, evades his stakes and vines and spikes.

They debate philosophy in the quiet of the moonlit night, and argue divinity in the silence of the white-sun day. In the language of the gods, it moves and changes the fabrics of reality, of the world itself.

Kurotsuchi presses herself against Tenzo, at last, body to body, eye to eye.

One must suppress the other.

Yamato was long since prepared. He had killed her father, after all.

A rock-enhanced punch to the side of his head, and his seals, grown into his body and his chakra system and his veins, activate.

He slides sideways into another world, and all goes dark.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto stares down at the familiar face, bereft as it is from the happuri-style forehead protector that his mentor once wore.

"Yamato-sensei," he murmurs.

Even concussed, asleep, resting, Naruto notes that natural chakra leaks from this man, and it is rich and intense. Life chakra, pure life chakra, flows and enlightens, enriches, the rock-tent around him, flow in the cracks in the walls and the door, out onto the drowned, salted island outside.

Around his sandals moss has sprouted already into flowers and berries, grass and plants.

Against the far wall, opposite the seal, already bamboo has begun to shoot up from the soil. Next to the small spring, lilypads bud. Rushes have grown; watercress, a willow sapling blooms from nowhere, and begins to push upwards against the ceiling.

"Naruto..." Sakura says, color returning to her face. "What is this...what is he?"

Naruto looks at the man, and waits for him to awaken.

* * *

Before long the rock-tent is too choked with foliage to be stayed in. Sakura moves the rock, and they sit outside.

The sky curves upward over them like an over-large rice bowl, and rain falls down in solid drops, thick and oozing life chakra. The sky is purple and orange and gray in equal measure, and Sakura spends her time staring up at it and counting the meaningless clouds.

Naruto sits and watches the rock-tent; it is a greenhouse, a garden, a bower.

Green stretches out from it. It is the most vivid nearest to the rockhouse.

It is more green than Uzushiogakure has seen in its lifetime.

Naruto himself has but seen it four times in all his existence; this is the heart of the Senju, the almost-divine power that his Shodaime Hokage bore with him.

Naruto wonders what Yamato-sensei - this Yamato - holds within him, and waits for the man to wake up.


	7. Priest-Shino

What is the use of a god if there is no one to believe in him? What is the use of an ear if there is nothing to hear? For Tenzo slept, and slept the dreams of the long-dreaming, the hibernating, slumbering winter, leaves stark off the bone-limbed branch.

Divine calls to divine, which leaves webbing, fly-feet on skin; the prickle as one turns around and sees nothing there. An impression of pain, perhaps, as something beyond mortal ken.

So too did Tenzo's divinity call out into the void. A scream between the stars, dwindling.

Someone - something - answered.

A sleeping tree waits but for the kiss to awaken.

So come, come, dance, dance, with the bumblebees.

Somewhere, among the infinite stars, time-streams over rivers over lakes over ponds, hatching, growing, cocooning, came the priest of a cult for the Little God of Growth.

There was a rumbling in the chakra, as though something had shaken the foundations of the reality itself.

* * *

Naruto tensed and clutched the ground, and reinforced everything he had set. He nested Sakura in a net of his own chakra, and physically set her behind him. She was trembling, out of her league and depth.

Something was coming. Vast, brimming with malignant and almost diseased chakra, a being full of mandibles and legs and faceted eyes.

Wings spread out from the rock-tent, stretching from horizon to horizon, a shimmering rainbow construct of dark, inside-out chakra that reached backward and forward and inside and out, a gathering of dimensions.

They twisted.

The wings came into sight. The shaking intensified.

Naruto's nose was hit by a scent of pure sweetness, as though heaven's pollen itself came down from above, musky but gentle, all the good things of nature's bounty itself unleashed. It carried him up and away and brought his head down low and his eyelids sliding shut. He fought it, fought his way back from it.

Behind him Sakura was murmuring the properties of medicines that could be made from this pollen, word tumbling after word, slur after slur.

* * *

Naruto's eyes shut. He forced them open, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. Dry, like all the water in him had dropped and was pooling around his feet. He had a sudden, uncomfortable, urge to wander off into the bushes.

As his eyes lingered open, fighting against the weights that slammed across his body, he noticed a crown of leaves spiralling up from the roof of the rock-tent, to where the wings were obscured behind a headband of clouds, up to the sun itself.

Taller and taller it grew, branches sprouting from the tips, dividing and swooping and twirling until it resembled a reverse lightning bolt, come up to reach the heavens.

The pollen intensified, and despite himself, despite everything, Naruto took one step, two, towards the rock-tent. He was vaguely aware of Sakura clinging to his back.

Then -

The barrage stopped.

The wings receded.

"I apologize for the horror, Uzumaki-san," a familiar voice said. The voice echoed with a sepulchre that the familiarity could not quite obscure.

"It was necessary for the travel between voids, and worlds. Eldritch creatures rarely interfere with one another."

The face emerged from the shadow behind the rock, encrusted already with a micro-ecology.

Sunglasses, wrought from chitin. A silk robe, sweeping the ground. Several things moved beneath the robe, more than two arms, and two legs. Yet those levered apart the small gap between rock and wall, and stepped forth.

"...Shino-kun?" Sakura asked.

* * *

Shino, High Priest of the Hex Sect of the Canonical Growth Absorptane of the Circadian Church, looked out upon this strange world.

His fingers itched. His god was calling for him, a rare avatar with such youth on his face.

The Bounty must be fresh, for it stretched up to the heavens as per the early holy-books all said, upon arrival of the Circadian Church. But its trunk was thin, thinner than the span of his arm.

His kikaichu buzzed around him, feeding him sensory information that his eyes, attuned to the divine, demonic, and eldritch, could no longer perceive.

Uzumaki Naruto, once-jinchuuriki of the Kyubi. Strange - in his homeline, Naruto was known as the unpredictable container of the Eight-Tailed Hachibi. But the remnants of fox-chakra was unmistakeable.

"-Shino-kun?"

Ah, Haruno Sakura. A fine nun from the Wings Sect, who specialized in both healing and administering the Cut. Except not, surely - this girl had none of the knowledge that surety brought her. Even past thin membranes of professionalism and confidence, he could perceive the turmoil that lay in the spiritual side of her chakra.

"Haruno-san," Shino said.

She hid her eyes from him, looked away as though the sight of him could not be borne. As though she saw into the fifth dimension, or the sixth. She couldn't, not really, although that second personality of hers (oh yes, he knew about it, as he knew all the secrets of the Wings Sect, being a subshoot of the Hex Sect) could sense the fifth, just a little.

Enough to make her dangerous. Enough to have pushed her to become a mere nun, safe in the bosom of her sect. Away from the creatures that crawled between the stars.

But this wasn't that Haruno Sakura, was this? This was a different person, a different world. Different personalities, and experiences.

"My mistake," Shino murmured. "I had not thought that my arrival would cause such deleterious effects on your two personages."

In fact, he hadn't realized that the pollen that his summon had given out (to prevent any potential violence from being spawned) would be magnified to such potential, being in the personal presence of his god. Odd - a note would have to be made.

"Shino," Uzumaki-san said, standing up to his full height. In Shino's perception, this spread apart the webbing of his chakra, even as it continued to protect the withdrawn girl behind him. At his right appendage, chakra began to gather in some concentration. Shino's kikaichu buzzed, worried.

While Shino lived not in fear of death (for who could fear death when its only consequence was rebirth - and was not his god directly behind him, sleeping in a newly-born forest?) his work was not yet done.

"Peace, Uzumaki-san," Shino said. His kikaichu, the ones he had sent out on a preliminary scout, returned to him with a humble bumblebee in tow. She bowed to him, recognizing in some part of her hind-brain his dominion as queen above her queen. Well on her way to becoming a summon for some shinobi on this world, somewhere.

Umikaete, his kikaichu supplied. Thank you, he replied. It was always good to know the names of one's disciples.

The bumblebee went off to inform her nest where the best nectar lay. Shino knew that, after having his kikaichu bless her, she would dance the best dance that bumblebees ever knew, all the steps and more besides.

"I am doing my duty as a priest of the Hex Sect, of the living commandments of growth."

"...The Hex Sect?" Haruno-san asked.

"Yes." Shino made no move forward, nor backward, but spread his arms out to his sides. "My god is the living god, Tenmei no Tenzo. I am one of his high priests."

"...Yamato-sensei?" Uzumaki-san asked.

Shino paused. That fact - that Uzumaki-san, this Uzumaki-san, knew Tenzo-sama's birth name, the one his mother gave him, was something that he hadn't made calculations for. If he knew, then he was much more holy than his own world's Naruto-san was.

And. If Tenzo-sama had /taught/ this man, then he was someone to watch out for.

"Yes. Tenzo-sama taught us by walking with the living, and encouraging us to grow further. To compete but not to capture, to work with rather than against. As I am an adept of the Hex Sect, I work with insects."

He remembered, still, his birth colony, where kikaichu buzzed through the green-dark burrows, the moss growing along the walls, the brighter fungi where tourists came to gawk and peek.

Among the inner tunnels, as kikaichu (dry and light, unlike what the bedtime boogeymen stories painted them to be) tunneled or crept, parting around his person like they would to any other Aburame. The heart of the colonies, where the breeding grounds lay, where omega queens in untold number pleaded to be chosen by a Hexer, wished that they could be chosen by a priest, and but dreamed that they would be succession-picked by an Aburame queen.

The light and heavy scents of fruits and nectar from the honey-bee strains of the breeders, ever-thinking, ever-calculating. A constant hum as familiar and as underlying as his heartbeat. Where he slept and his kikaichu mingled with the others in the communion of the hive, where he was more than queen and more than Shino, more than Aburame, the line which went all the way back to when Tenzo-sama was born, running around like any other child of the Sects.

Some said the Aburame line was even older than Tenzo-sama's; but, like other heretics, they had little proof. The Aburame themself simply had faith, and that the faith would come true.

Shino himself was named after a clan heir that came just after Tenzo-sama fought in the war, just after He was wounded by a goddess of vengeance from Iwa.

Naruto-san, his world's Naruto-san, followed in the tradition of the jinchuriki and had picked out the name that felt the closest to his, after the Hachibi was sealed into him. He belonged to the scholarly section of the Horn Sect, a prestigious subshoot of the Oct Sect, prestigious because it took care of the Hachibi jinchuuriki. Although, Shino laughed quietly to himself (his kikaichu buzzing in amused agreement) he regularly drove his family crazy by being physically and mentally unpredictable. In time, the Hachibi would settle him down.

Or perhaps drive him nutty in trying to find a rhyme to 'orange'. Then again - that being his favorite color - the end result might be that they drove each _other_ insane. It was an ancient mystery that the Hachibi would never answer. Such a mystery that it became one of those riddles, those koans. 'Why does the Hachibi love to rap?'

But now was not the time to think of Naruto-san, who lived sprawled out over white-marble cushions in the heart of the Horn Sect, whose buildings lay under the lapping waves. White marble, gleaming purely, even in waters colored green or red or even blue by the algae in the water, by the split of the planet's sky under the sunlight of the system's red sun.

This Uzumaki-san extinguished the power in his appendage. His presence came one foot-length closer. Then another.

"Shino," he said. The feeling in the air changed, as though a storm hovering at the edge of realization had changed its mind and moved away.

Shino started as one of his eldest kikaichu, a queen who had come to him from his mother, stung him at the base of his neck.

What - there had been a storm? In the seventh dimension? _Chitin_.

The kikaichu stung him again for bad language. For even trying to disguise bad language.

Uzumaki-san stopped, then started again. Stopped again. Took in a breath.

"Welcome to Sekai no Owarigakure," he said. Smiled. Kikaichu formed the smile on the back of Shino's left knee. It was much too satisfied to be anything but utterly confident.

Shino found his right wrist quivering a little. Perhaps he wasn't as ready for dealing with eldritch creatures of other universes as he had thought?

None of his experiences compared to this level of killer intent. Still, the presence of his god, sleeping (so near, _so_ near to him) reassured him, let him stand strong.

"I am pleased to be here."

"I have but one rule, Shino," Uzumaki-san said.

"Please go on."

"Leave this place better than you found it."

Shino found a human smile creeping up on his lips before he could stop it.

"Is that all, Uzumaki-san? Is there truly nothing else that you wish to add?"

"No."

"Done."

Behind him a flight of bumblebees was already pollinating the large flowers hanging from the Bounty. In less than a day, Shino knew, they would begin fruiting, and by his word as a high priest of the living god, they would never go hungry again.

There was an interesting seal by where his deity slept. Shino wanted to have a look. It looked almost as intricate as the Whirlpool sect's seals, and he had studied under the Kushina School, once, in a colony a long way away and a long time ago.

"Uzumaki-san...if you are this village's Kage, then...tomorrow, you will have your first resident. My word upon it."

"What about you, Shino-kun? Aren't you planning to be a resident?" Haruno-san asked.

"No," Shino flashed her a smile. She returned it shyly. "Because..."

"I am a priest."


End file.
